A party of rabbinic sages during the Second Temple period, from the time of the Hasmoneans onward, who developed the practical implications of the concept of the Oral Law, and in so doing clarified and expanded the laws of the Bible. The Pharisees also believed in the resurrection of the dead and the existence of the afterlife (World to Come). A number of theories have been proposed to explain the development of the name:
The Hebrew perushim is related to the root separate, and the Pharisees were so named because they strictly separated themselves from ritual impurity. They also "separated" and donated the required tithes and priestly gifts.
The Pharisees were separate from the rest of the people in their high ethical standards, and the care they took in the performance of the commandments.
The Pharisees separated themselves from contact with non-Jews and Jews who did not keep all the laws of the Torah.
The name was coined by the opponents of the Pharisees – the Sadducees, the wealthy class, holders of high office, who opposed the Pharisaic conception of the Oral Law and saw the party that opposed their own way as schismatic and separationist from the rest of the Jewish people.
The Pharisees opposed the Hasmoneans when the latter exhibited a tendency to abandon tradition and began emulating the Greek rulers of the country. From an early point in the Hasmonean period, the Pharisees began functioning in a sectarian fashion, and the final years of the Second Temple saw the bitter struggle between the Pharisees and their opponents for influence within the Sanhedrin and among the people at large. As a result of the Pharisees' absolute ascendancy after the destruction of the Temple, their views became normative for the entire Jewish people. With the development of Christianity, it was the Pharisees who effectively opposed the new direction and kept Christianity out of the bounds of normative Judaism. As a result, the New Testament takes an extremely critical stance toward them. The Talmud and Midrashim are Pharisaic works, and it was the Pharisees who established the recognized texts of fixed prayer and the principles, as well as much of the detail, of Jewish law in effect to this day.
